Labor hiding tax failure: Milne

“I think what we’ve got here is an embarrassment by both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer because all that they promised with the mineral resources rent tax hasn’t come to pass,” Christine Milne said.
Photo: Peter Mathew

by
Gemma Daley

Greens leader
Christine Milne
says the government is trying to run away from the fact that the mining tax hasn’t raised any money, after Labor rejected a claim that Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
promised to provide a public monthly update of its revenue.

Ms Milne maintains that Ms Gillard, in a letter to former Greens leader
Bob Brown
before the legislation was passed, promised to release monthly tax figures for the minerals resource rent tax and to revise revenue by January 31.

But a spokesman for Treasurer
Wayne Swan
said the letter merely committed to an update about the MRRT and the petroleum resource rent tax and did not commit to separating the two.

“The letter clearly refers to the MRRT and commits to a monthly update on that tax," Senator Milne told The Australian Financial Review. “The government is now using weasel words to hide behind the truth [that the] tax is a failure and hasn’t raised anything; it’s an embarrassment to Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan."

The government’s refusal to produce the MRRT figures may prompt the Greens to back a motion from shadow assistant treasurer
Mathias Cormann
for the Tax Commissioner to provide the revenue figures to the Senate economics committee.

Senator Milne said she would speak to Ms Gillard about the issue before the Greens decided what to do with the Liberal senator’s motion and she would continue to press for a full review and legislation, if necessary, to broaden the tax’s base to gold and to cap royalties that were credited to companies through it.

Mr Swan’s spokesman said: “The government publishes information about revenue from resource rent taxes in the monthly financial statements, as stated in the Prime Minister’s letter.

“The financial statements released last month for the first quarter of the 2012-13 financial year showed $501 million was collected in resource rent taxes. The projected revenue from the MRRT was written down in our midyear update by $4.3 billion as a result of continued global instability, commodity price volatility and a high dollar."

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“Common sense tells you that taxation occurs as a result of relationships which individuals and companies have with the Australian Taxation Office, and there are privacy issues there," Transport Minister
Anthony Albanese
said yesterday. “Let’s have a bit of common sense here, and if people just think about that, and think about their own situation, they’ll come to the obvious answer."